Quarantine of confirmed cases of Omicron and close contacts will be reduced from 14 to 10 days

The quarantine authorities announced that they plan to shorten the quarantine period for COVID-19 omicron mutants and their close contacts from 2 weeks to 10 days.

Park Young-joon, head of the epidemiological investigation team at the Central Quarantine Countermeasures Headquarters, said at a back briefing about the adjustment of the quarantine period for those infected with Omicron mutation and close contacts, "We are in the process of changing the 14-day self-quarantine period to 10 days."

Those infected with other mutations such as COVID-19 non-compliance or delta will be quarantined for 10 days if asymptomatic, and if symptomatic, they will be released from quarantine 11 days after seeing symptoms for 24 hours in addition to 10 days.

Bangdaebon explained that the period of propagation of Omicron mutation is not different from that of non-mutation and existing mutation, and that the self-quarantine period of the Omicron-infected person will be adjusted.

In addition, he mentioned a specific period of time to reduce the quarantine period for those infected with Omicron and in close contact with them from 2 weeks to 10 days.

Regarding the shortening of the self-quarantine period for close contacts of infected people, Park said, "As it is confirmed that it can be done, it will be shortened from 14 days to 10 days, and will be implemented next week at the latest." Because there are so many close contacts, regardless of their vaccination history, they were asked to self-isolate for 14 days from the date of the last exposure, but as a result of analyzing while responding to the site for a month, 99.9% of the confirmed cases were confirmed on the 9th day of the test.”

Meanwhile, quarantine authorities said it is difficult to make a prompt decision to shorten the quarantine period for all asymptomatic confirmed cases and close contacts to five days, as in the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new guideline that reduced the quarantine period for people infected with COVID-19 from 10 days to half, or 5 days.